December 1997
From Sport Express (Russia):
EKATERINA GORDEEVA
by Elena Vaitsekhovskaya
translated by Anne Fluegge
Americans believe that they know everything about Gordeeva. Popular magazines relish every detail of her personal life, even including such facts as the cost of her new home and the clothes she wears. They consider her 100% American. But a month ago in San Jose she suddenly said to me: "More than anything in the world I want to go to Russia. Right now. But it's not even worth thinking about when I will return...." America will never understand this.
I have wanted to write about Russian immigrants in America for a long time. Not about those who deliberately travelled across the ocean in search of a better life, but about those who went there once and stayed, bound hand and foot to their work, who would have had greater happiness could they have stayed in Russia, but for whom there is simply nothing in Russia.
This interview took place at the end of October. In San Jose at the start of the season, professional figure skaters met, and the first night I sat with Katya Gordeeva in a fashionable restaurant in the fashionable hotel "Fairmont".
"I don't want anything to eat, I'm very tired. Let's....let's order pastries! They're my favorite!" she said.
Katya had flown through Thursday night to California from her house (her home is in Simsbury, a town on the eastern shore of the USA) together with Olympic Champion Victor Petrenko and his trainer on the ice and mother-in-law off the ice, Galina Zmievskaya. On Saturday, Gordeeva was going to perform, and on Sunday morning she was to return to Simsbury, only to take off again in three days for a competition in Las Vegas, about which Katya's manager Debbie Nash kindly informed me. I had slightly more than 24 hours to work with. Therefore, breaking all unwritten laws, the most important being not to bother an athlete before a competition, I arrived at the frozen practice rink Friday morning, to see the figure skaters.
"Shall we have supper together? You will have to eat somewhere, and if we ate together, we could talk."
"Ok," Katya easily agreed. "Only I still don't know when I'll be free. Right after training I have to go to the hotel to pick up my skating dress, and then in the main rink I have to run through my program: the lights technician has to check out the lights on my costume & the soundman has to check my music."
Gordeeva was free only around 7 o'clock: in the courtyard of the rink, as fits a day of figure skating, there was much confusion and bustle. In the restaurant she courageously fought against sleep.
"I'm sorry, but in Simsbury, it's already night-time."
"Do you have many competitions until December?"
"I can't complain; I am frequently invited. In the end of December the IMG tour begins, and then I will be performing practically every evening. Then, we will have a short break for the Olympics in Nagano, where I will be commenting on the pairs competition for an American TV channel. And after that, the tour begins again. And by the way, please excuse me: when you called me in September, we were practicing in the rink from 10 to 10, and I was very busy. That's why I was unable to talk on the telephone."
"Frankly speaking, I had hoped that at least for a little bit, I could bring you to Moscow."
"I would be delighted to go, and for a long time if I could. But as it is I can hardly get away before May."
Katya fell silent for a little while, gently shaking her glass of wine. I didn't want to talk about the coming competition, neither did I want to be like the author of a big article about Gordeeva in the September issue of Good Housekeeping, but that very article (I had read it in the plane) repeatedly came to mind.
The article was a great revelation. Two years of a skater's life were crammed into a 3-page spread. Two years without Sergei; her husband and partner who suddenly died from a heart attack while training on the ice. Some questions from the text of the article were prudently left out. Katya's story breaks the hearts of all who hear it, as it is. What then is left to say about the heart of Katya herself?
"I cannot re-read my book," she said to me a year ago at the World Professional Championships in Innsbruck. "I tried to several times, but I couldn't bear the memories. Probably I shouldn't have agreed to write it in the first place."
One hundred thousand copies of the book, "My Sergei; A Love Story", were printed in the United States. In order to increase sales, IMG, with whom Katya has an exclusive multi-year contract, organized a special tour for Katya to meet with people, talk with them about herself, and sign autographs for her many fans. The book was an instant best-seller, and after the first edition, there was a second, this time in paperback. The publishers figured this way: those who could not afford $20 for the original bestselling hard cover with wonderful full-color pictures, could certainly afford $8 for the paperback edition.
A few months later, and immediately after several Russian magazines had published excerpts from different chapters of Katia's book, I got a call from someone who knew Katia & Sergei: "How could she? What for!!! Doesn't she understand that her grief only causes people to be all the more curious?"
How could I explain that in America, everything, including peoples' attitudes and outlooks on life, is completely different from what it is in Russia?
Americans always were convinced that everything that happens on their territory is the most interesting and most deserving of attention. That is why all pro competitions, where in gymnastics, figure skating, or roller skating, invariably receive the status of world championships and accordingly are widely advertised.
The first stream of Russian (to be precise, Soviet) sport emigrants went crazy from the staggering amounts of fame and fortune found in America. "Why did you come to America", I asked everyone I met on the other side of the ocean. The standard answer was, "Because they pay more for sports here than anywhere else in the world."
In Innsbruck, sitting in the restaurant with Gordeeva, her coach Marina Zueva, and her agent Debbie Nash, after she had won second place in the Nutrasweet World Pro Championships, I once again began the conversation on this theme. The conversation, for Debbie's sake, had been in English, but suddenly Katya switched to Russian:
"Do you understand that I can not just stop skating? Here, no one voluntarily leaves the ice, because they know that money - thousands of dollars - will come to them if they stay. Even if you don't win, you receive an honorarium for coming, for going out on the ice, for performing, for advertising, for TV shoots, etc. To leave all that without a reason would be crazy! And it would be difficult to find a reason! Why do you think that most professional skaters have no children?"
I happened to speak on the same subject with another Olympic champion, Marina Klimova. Klimova and Ponomarenko's victory in the Albertville Olympics (which was a surprise to everyone, at least to the skaters themselves, and their then coach Tatiana Tarasova) lifted their "market" value to incredible heights. K&P own a distinctive record - for more than ten years, they have skated in the most famous yearly exhibition show (the Tom Collins Tour), where for one performance (and they perform approximately 70 times a year), stars are paid more than $5000. The sum of honorariums is always kept in the strictest confidence, but they say that Olympic Champion Kristi Yamaguchi was paid $9000 by Tom Collins, and Oksana Baiul, who won the gold in '94, earns slightly less.
"I wanted more than anything to leave the ice for a little while and have a baby," Marina told me, "but somehow, Tom Collins heard of our plans, and immediately enlarged the sum in our contract. So we... we decided to postpone our plans for another year."
In February, Marina will become a mother. She and her husband performed in "Tour 97" until the last day. "Tour 98" begins in April.
In 1991, G&G won the World Pro Championships for the first time, and signed a contract with IMG Stars on Ice. In early September 1992, Dasha was born, and in late September, Katya was already working out in the gym, preparing for the next tour. In fact, the birth of their daughter was the starting point of Sergei and Katya's American life.
Notwithstanding Gordeeva's petite and delicate appearance, everyone who had anything to do with the ice skaters, invariably noticed that the strongest part of the duo was perhaps Katya herself. "I only now understand that for me, Sergei was like a brick wall,: Katya said after her husband passed away. That is the truth, but it is what made Katya even stronger. When they were still amateurs, during a competition in Italy, Grinkov as a result of nerves, fell in the middle of a program. Katya, as if by chance, gave her husband her shoulder, and literally kept him on his feet. In the newspapers the next day, there was unbounded rapture: "Molto Sportivo!!!", the headlines shouted, which in Italian sports slang is a high degree of praise.
In America, all the work and domestic troubles fell on Katya. "If Sergei had spoken English, I probably would not have had to make all the decisions," said Katya. But as it was, she made all the decisions independently, even during negotiations with IMG concerning an increase in their salary after the birth of Dasha. Perhaps it was then, at the end of 1992, that they began to understand that, in America, despite all their merits, G&G were only screws in a gigantic show machine.
"For me, it was strange and uncomfortable to hold conversations about money," Gordeeva remembers. "But there was no other way. I remember I said something along these lines: What do you think, would it be possible for us to get a little more money next season, because now we have a child to take care of...? Jane Ogden, a manager from IMG, listened carefully to our difficulties, but said that IMG had a lot of figure skaters to choose from, and she expressed the hope that our present contract with IMG would suit us."
After the Olympic games in Lillehammer, Sergei and Katya had no relief from commercial offers. Unlike other professionals, whose return to amateur ranks was more than anything an attempt to raise their falling market value and for the most part failing in their athletic attempts, G&G won, and returned as champions. And that meant that they could dictate their own terms to anyone who was interested. Even IMG. So they continued for almost two years.
But on February 27, 1996, in a farewell performance of professional stars dedicated to the memory of Sergei, Katya, for the first time in her life, went on the ice, all alone.
"Please don't bother her before the competition", the voice of Galina Zmievskaya, "Iron Lady" of figure skating, sounded in my ear. "She is really very weak. She is willing to train day and night, but she doesn't have enough strength. That's why she gets so awfully nervous, although she would never admit it."
On the ice for her practice, Katya time after time attempted a triple jump, but time after time failed. Zmievskaya continued:
"Look, how she glides on the ice. Do you remember all that gossip about whether or not Gordeeva would skate with another partner? Where would she find one? Almost nobody can match Katya's skill on the ice. There is no partner for her. Do you understand what I'm saying? Not even one!!!"
Many people tried to find a partner for Gordeeva after Sergei died. They tried to imagine what would happen if they paired her with Albertville Olympic champion Artur Dmitriev, one of Sergei's closest friends. Dmitriev's partner, Natalia Mishkutienok, had at that time decided to quit skating. Eventually, Dmitriev found a new partner in the young Oksana Kazakova.
I talked with pairs' coach Tamara Moskvina about the possibility of a union between Dmitriev and Gordeeva.
"We actually considered this possibility," she affirmed. "But he declined. He said he didn't want to jump into a gold boat.* (*This is a Russian saying that means he did not want to enjoy praise and glory that he did not earn.)
"The appearance of Katya in the field of ladies' skating will from now on create problems for everyone, even the very best professionals," I wrote a year ago, after Katya won 2nd place in on eof her first pro competitions in America, giving way to Kristi Yamaguchi, but leaving behind two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt, and World Champion Yuka Sato.
In San Jose, I saw that such was not the case. No, Katya did not skate any worse. Only I saw that the sport in which Katya had always been victorious, had now become instead a race for survival.
"I really love skating," she said to me during our dinner. "I do not even allow thoughts of quitting. Right now, skating is my whole life."
There is simply no other life for Gordeeva, at least not in the near future. She cannot stop now: thanks to the thorough work of managers, there is no escape from the onslaught of invitations, although they may end at any time, once she makes a mistake. Or the fans may get tired of her, as they (let's speak plainly) have for a long time been tired of Katarina Witt. The only difference between the freedom-loving German woman and Katya, is Katya's support system, her family, who takes care of her. Her mother, who frequently takes care of five-year-old Dasha, and her retired father, live with Katya in Simsbury, while her younger sister Maria lives in Moscow. Sergei's mother and sister are also in Moscow, as well as Katya's niece Svetlana ("Sergei always wanted for her to study in America, so I need to help her with that.")
"Katya is one hundred percent American," Debbie Nash tried to convince me while we were on the way to the rink in San Jose. "Go to Russia? Do you think that life would be any good for her in Russia? Everyone here loves her, and Dasha too."
America also loves, even more than that, success stories, or fairy tales, of people who came to their country. For example, the one about the young lady, Oksana Baiul, who grew up without parents, suddenly became rich overseas, but then lost her way in the adult world. Or for example, Gordeeva. According to this genre (that of fairy tales), somewhere in the near future, a handsome fairy-tale prince should appear, and lead her off to a perfect "happy-ever-after" future. And then, the probability is very high, that America will lose interest in Gordeeva.
But there are fewer princes in America, then there are lonely figure skaters.
the G&G corner - Copyright © Su-jan Yip, September 1996 - 2007